This post could also be called “what’s been keeping me busy lately.”Β The answer to that is a whole myriad of fascinating projects for clients, and one of these today hit the headlines.
I’m working with the senior team at Jade Software in New Zealand, and assisting in both innovation and foresight (the latter for clients of Jade).
I proposed the iPhone App Store idea as a way of stimulating software developers to think differently about what they designed and how they designed it. In a nutshell here’s the concept:
- any employee at Jade is encouraged to work with others to come up with an idea for an iPhone app. We think that the team that will win the competition will be cross-functional i.e. not just developers, but also people from sales, marketing, admin, etc.
- Jade has provided both non-technical overviews of the Apple ecosystem, and technical sessions on programming for the iPhone
- the company has also setup a series of Apple workstations and allowed people to spend company time on these developing their apps
- the winner of the competition is the one with the most downloads by Christmas.Β they not only receive the latest iPhone (and connection for two years), they also keep every cent they earn from people buying their app
- teams need to think about how they market their app and use their social networks, media etc to spread the word.Β In other words, they are bringing their own little business to life, but being bankrolled by the company they work for.
I was impressed at the way in which theΒ CEO and CIO at Jade both picked up the idea and ran with it, and the reaction from the wider team at Jade has been equally impressive (to the extent there’s had to been extra technical sessions added). Watch this space for updates…